Saturday, July 12, 2014

"To save our men's Lives...."


Algernon Fort, May 1610:
George Percy meant well. He had a Plan B: “And if all this [half the Jamestown colonists at a time] would not serve to save our men’s Lives I purposed to bring them all unto Algernown’s foarte.” That would have meant sailing both of Davis’s pinnaces upriver to transport the remaining men, women, and children, sixty or more severely malnourished people. There was not enough housing for sixty people at Algernon Fort.

Did Captain Davis see a problem with this?  Percy implied as much. He argued with Davis  “that another towne or forte might be erected and Builded, but mens lives once Lost could never be recovered.” Evidently Percy won out. He said that he planned to start for Jamestown “by the very next tide.”
        

            But that tide came and went, and Percy did not sail with it.

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